reallykindasorta

Abstract

Radiocarbon dating of the earliest occupational phases at the Cooper’s Ferry site in western Idaho indicates that people repeatedly occupied the Columbia River basin, starting between 16,560 and 15,280 calibrated years before the present (cal yr B.P.). Artifacts from these early occupations indicate the use of unfluted stemmed projectile point technologies before the appearance of the Clovis Paleoindian tradition and support early cultural connections with northeastern Asian Upper Paleolithic archaeological traditions. The Cooper’s Ferry site was initially occupied during a time that predates the opening of an ice-free corridor (≤14,800 cal yr B.P.), which supports the hypothesis that initial human migration into the Americas occurred via a Pacific coastal route.

The study concludes that technological choices in ancient Iberia were driven by local conditions, not a universal march toward improvement. The rejection or delay in adopting certain methods, such as co-fusion, points to deeper cultural and economic dynamics.

I find waiting for things physically exhausting. Waiting in lines, waiting sitting in a room, waiting on friends to decide what they want to eat, walking really slowly with an elderly relative: I find it all physically exhausting even though very little physical energy is required.

I know some of ya’ll don’t like Ancient Origins but they were the only secondary source I could find and the original press release is in Vietnamese

Especially noteworthy was a solid wooden beam connecting the two hulls at the bow, an architectural feature that is utterly unique, to Vietnam and to all of world history.

I expect that others are in the same boat and that we’ll see a downturn in consumer purchasing very soon.

The Egyptian archaeological mission, a collaboration between the Supreme Council of  Antiquities and the Zahi Hawass Foundation for Archaeology and Heritage, headed by renowned Egyptologist Zahi Hawass, uncovered the tomb of Prince Waser-If-Re.

Waser-If-Re is the son of King Userkaf, the founding monarch of Egypt's Fifth Dynasty. His tomb was found alongside several significant artefacts spanning the Old Kingdom and the Late Period.

Snippet: The oldest cemetery in Africa is yielding yet more insights into the lives of ancient humans.

Around 15,000 years ago, people were living and burying their dead in a cave in northern Morocco. On the cusp of the transition between a semi-nomadic and settled life, the remains of these people and their grave goods offer a fascinating insight into the lives and cultures of this community.

Part of this seems to have involved a bird known as the great bustard. These large, impressive animals were once found across much of Eurasia and part of north Africa until hunting, habitat disturbance and destruction significantly fragmented their population.

Africa’s only population clings on in Morocco, where the species is considered critically endangered. Closely related but genetically distinct to the Spanish population, there has been some debate about how long great bustards had lived in north Africa. This new finding confirms that the birds have a long history on the African continent, and were much more abundant and widespread than they are today.

“These are the first hints we are seeing of an alien world that is possibly inhabited,” Nikku Madhusudhan at the University of Cambridge told a press conference on 15 March.

Astronomers first discovered the exoplanet K2-18b in 2015, and soon established that it was a promising place to look for life. About eight times as massive as Earth and orbiting a star 124 light years away from us, the planet sits in the habitable zone of its star, where liquid water can exist.

Further observations, in 2019, found evidence of water vapour, which led to suggestions that the planet may be covered in oceans sitting under a hydrogen-rich atmosphere, though not all astronomers agreed.

In 2023, Madhusudhan and his colleagues used the instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to look at K2-18b’s atmosphere in near-infrared light, and again found evidence of water vapour, as well as carbon dioxide and methane.

Theory of alien life supported by molecule produced only by living organisms

But they also found a tantalising hint of dimethyl sulphide (DMS), a molecule that, on Earth, is produced only by living organisms, mainly marine phytoplankton. The signs for DMS were extremely weak, however, and many astronomers argued that we would need much stronger evidence to be certain about the molecule’s presence.

Now, Madhusudhan and his colleagues have used a different instrument from JWST, the mid-infrared camera, to observe K2-18b. They found a much stronger signal for DMS, as well as a possible related molecule called dimethyl disulphide (DMDS), which is also produced on Earth only by life.

“What we are finding is an independent line of evidence in a different wavelength range with a different instrument of possible biological activity on the planet,” Madhusudhan said.

The team claims that the detection of DMS and DMDS is at the three-sigma level of statistical significance, which is equivalent to a 3-in-1000 chance that a pattern of data like this ends up being a fluke. In physics, the standard threshold for accepting something as a true discovery is five sigma, which equates to a 1-in-3.5 million chance that the data is a chance occurrence.

LATNIJA, MALTA—According to a statement released by the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, researchers have found evidence that hunter-gatherers from mainland Europe traveled to Malta around 1,000 years earlier than previously believed. Archaeologists recovered stone tools, hearths, and food waste at a cave site in Latnija that indicated humans have been living on the island for 8,500 years. This means that they arrived there even before the widespread adoption of agriculture, which contradicts long-held assumptions. Experts theorize that they made the journey in simple dugout canoes, making this new discovery the oldest evidence of long-distance seafaring in the Mediterranean prior to the invention of boats with sails. The voyagers would have relied on surface currents to cross about 60 miles of open sea. At a top speed of 2.5 miles an hour, this would have forced the intrepid seafarers to endure several hours of darkness on their journey. “The results add a thousand years to Maltese prehistory and force a re-evaluation of the seafaring abilities of Europe’s last hunter-gatherers, as well as their connections and ecosystem impacts,” said Max Planck archaeological scientist Eleanor Scerri. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Nature.